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History: The books that a president stacks on his nightstand might seem as mildly prurient as the contents of somebody else's medicine cabinet. But if he's touting a title to another head of state, then we care.Example: the volume President Bush pressed on Germany's Angela Merkel when she visited the White House two weeks ago. He'd just read "Mao: The Unknown Story," he revealed as the two talked of Merkel's upbringing in then-communist East Germany. Bonding with Merkel, Bush felt the new chancellor would recognize the sordid rise to power of China's late tyrant. She'd appreciate it in a way...

This is my review of Jung Chang and Jon Hallidays new book: Mao, The Untold Story"In a world of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell

The real Mao Lorne Gunter National Post Monday, October 24, 2005 A new biography of Mao Tse-Tung is forcing the Chinese to re-examine their views of the Great Helmsman. The book appears to be causing at least as much ideological dyspepsia among Mao's Western admirers, of whom there are still many. Mao: The Unknown Story, by the wife-and-husband team of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, demonstrates convincingly that the founding dictator of communist China was a thug, not a secular saint. He was always as willing to kill his rivals and supporters as his opponents, always bourgeois, arrogant and...

A TINY widow aged 85, living in two rooms, an electric rice cooker her only modern appliance, may be a crucial witness to a key dispute involving wealthy Chinese author Jung Chang, who lives in great comfort in London's plush Notting Hill from the proceeds of her worldwide bestselling book Wild Swans. The dispute is one of many being picked by some of the world's most eminent scholars of modern Chinese history, who say Chang's latest blockbuster book, Mao - The Unknown Story, co-authored with her British historian husband Jon Halliday, is a gross distortion of the records. Few are...

Stalin is supposed to have said, “one death is a tragedy; thousands are but a statistic.” Let us, for a moment then, ponder this statistic, from the very opening sentence of Jung Chang’s and Jon Halliday’s majestic new biography of Chairman Mao: “Mao Tse-tung, who for decades held absolute power over the lives on one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.” Think about that for a moment. The staggering figure exceeds that of the deaths caused by Stalin and Hitler combined. But while one can find almost...

Three decades after his death the face of Mao Tse-tung still stares out over the huge expanse of Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. Though the authorities now admit that the founder of Communist China was “70% right, 30% wrong”, the man who led the greatest revolution since the second world war remains a sacrosanct figure in the world’s most heavily populated nation. This summer, though, his reputation has been comprehensively demolished in the West by the bestselling biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang, author of the perennial bestseller Wild Swans, and her historian husband, Jon Halliday. It blames...

"The biggest Asian tiger!" "The new century's economic miracle!" "The next global superpower!" These are some of the clichés used to describe the People's Republic of China which, its Communist political structures notwithstanding, has experienced remarkable economic growth during the past four or five years. In a short time the People's Republic has emerged as the world's second largest importer of crude oil, just behind the United States, the biggest global exporter of textiles, and the world's largest manufacturer of a wide-range of cheap consumer goods. According to some estimates, China, whose population will reach a staggering 1.5 billion people...

Mao Tse-tung may be dead, but the survival of his legacy remains important to the "pragmatic" rulers of China. This presumably is why they banned the June issue of our sister publication, The Far Eastern Economic Review, for carrying a review of a book that reveals the extent of Mao's crimes during his 1949-1976 rule. "Mao: The Untold Story" is by Jung Chang, author of "Wild Swans," the 1990s best seller that introduced readers world-wide to the horrors of Mao's 1967-76 Cultural Revolution. Her new book is co-written with her husband, the historian Jon Halliday. It was reviewed for the...